It is often desirable to pour a sauce or other topping over a food product prior to eating said food product. These sauces are normally sold separately from the product to be topped and are applied just prior to serving the product. For example, ice cream and custard-type desserts may be eaten with toppings such as chocolate sauce or sauces coming in a variety of fruit and non-fruit flavors. These sauces come in cans or bottles and may be poured or spooned onto the dessert prior to eating. Such sauces are generally sold in containers which hold numerous servings of sauce since a typical serving of sauce is often a teaspoon to several tablespoons. Thus, an open container of sauce usually must be kept and stored long after the product to be topped has been consumed. Furthermore, if different flavors of sauce are desired, several separate containers of sauce must be opened and stored. These sauces may lose their freshness during storage and be less appetizing when used a second or subsequent time.
Further problems are caused by transferring a sauce to the product to be topped. Generally, a separate spoon must be used to transfer sauce from its container. Since sauces are often viscous, sauce can be wasted on the spoon or other serving implement. Sauces can also be poured from their containers but this can be quite messy. When the presentation of the product is important, it is desirable to serve a product with sauce carefully placed on the product and not running off of the plate or onto a tablecloth or on the server's hands. It takes considerable care to avoid these problems when serving a sauce out of a separate container.
Sauces may be sold in single portion containers but this generally increases the price thereof as a greater amount of packaging must be employed. One would still generally have to buy a box of individual containers, rather than just one or two containers. Finally, the large ratio of package interior surface area to sauce volume means that it will be difficult to remove all of a sauce from a single serving package.
Attempts have been made to overcome the above problems by packaging products such as ice cream with a sauce already applied. However, it is difficult to keep the sauce from flowing to one section of the container if the product is not frozen. If the product and sauce are frozen, the product may be served with a sauce frozen to it which detracts from the appearance and palatability of the product when served. Known methods for packaging food sources often have one or more of these failings.